They thought they were at their best. They were very much inclined to come into the House with carefuly prepared manuscripts. Pity the House if a fellow got called who had a large wad of manuscripts prepared because he read it out slowly and eloquently, and stretched it out as far as he could so that nobody would hear anybody else. I understand it was not easy to overcome that and I am not sure that the thing has not been dropped. To tell the truth, I am reluctantly driven to the conclusion that the only satisfactory way you could broadcast Parliament would be to have a wavelength reserved for that, and to turn it on at 3 o'clock and leave it on until 10.30 p.m. If nobody listened what matter, and if anybody chose to listen, let them listen. Ideally that would be a very good thing to do. A lot of people might say: "Nobody listens to it," but if they do not want to listen that is their business.
Sometimes the Gallery of this House is crowded by people who want to listen to the proceedings. On other occasions there is not a single creature in it, but the important thing is that it is open, just as in the Four Courts when days may pass and not a creature goes into the public galleries and on other days the galleries will be taxed to capacity. The important thing to remember is that the galleries are there and justice is done in public, and any member of the public who wants to go there, is entitled to go, and it is very important that anybody who wants to see our proceedings should be free to do so.
I am inclined to agree with Deputy Sherwin if our people were afforded the opportunity of listening in here to our proceedings, but I do not think the suggested course of broadcasting the proceedings for a limited period is a good thing. It has been tried elsewhere and did not work. The ideal thing would be to turn on the broadcast at 3 o'clock and turn it off at 10.30 at night, giving it a wavelength of its own and let those who want to listen, listen and those who do not need not. Nobody could say afterwards that they were not free to participate in all that passes here.
The last thing to which I want to refer is one which I think is very important. People in this country, and in every other country, are grossly underestimating the appalling power of television. Radio is powerful enough, God knows, but it requires a certain amount of concentration to listen and apprehend what is being said on the Radio. We have all had the experience—and I speak in no irreverent sense—of listening to an eloquent preacher and you will hear any number of people coming out of church saying: "That's a wonderful preacher." But, if you ask them what he did say they are not too clear, because it requires sustained mental concentration to listen to a learned discourse on any topic and carry away what constituted the argument, or the theme. People might have a general idea, but to say they could faithfully, or even approximately, repeat the main fruits of a discourse extending over half an hour would be claiming too much. However, take a young child to the pictures and ask him afterwards what happened and he will give you a very fair description of all the outstanding events that transpired on the screen.
The interesting thing is that the more impressionable a person is who goes to an exhibition of that character, the more retentive his memory will be of the events that have transpired. I have frequently gone to the films, both with adolescents and with children—when I speak of adolescents I mean persons between the age of 18 and 23—and they will remember vividly details of the visual picture that they have seen in the film that would escape my notice altogether. Vice versa I could go with the same company to a lecture, debate or sermon and I will remember much more clearly the argument or theme of the discourse than they could possibly do, but the visual impression upon the impressionable is terrific.
I think we have had the necessary precautions in this country against obscenity and indecency, but there is an added immense danger and it is no use closing our eyes to the fact that international communism is forever on the march and its technique in a country like this is never overt. Its whole skill is that it approaches our people under a hundred disguises. It either represents itself as being the extreme left wing of nationalism, or it is not unprepared to appear as the champion of religious freedom. I reeve member discovering that a notorious Communist paper was being sold under clerical patronage in the front yard of a church in Portsmouth because the priest believed it to be a patriotic publication for the benefit of Irish nationalists, and never looked at it and never read it until I drew his attention to the nature of the publication. We have got to live with that fact but the fact that we have got to live with it should not paralyse us from taking effective measures to protect our people against it.
I know the average Communist can describe me as a Fascist beast because I say you have to watch these people, and the minute they put their heads up, hit them. You should not be ashamed to do it because if you do not hit them they will kick you in the stomach if they can get away with it, and one of their means of kicking you in the stomach is by their pernicious propaganda. One of the greatest dangers in dealing with the communistic type of degradation is that in an effort to defend yourself against the contamination they purvey you may be seduced into adopting their methods, and if they can succeed in degrading you to their own level they have achieved their purpose.
I do not think we should be forced into the position of exclusively restricting our own people's liberty even for the purpose of defending ourselves against such an abhorrent contamination as dialectic materialism, as preached by Marx and Lenin. We should not allow ourselves to be paralysed and I think when they proceed to disseminate propaganda, as they have recently sought to do in the cinemas of this city, it is very doubtful whether we should accept the proposition that such propaganda should be suppressed because, if it should get to the stage of suppressing propaganda, it is very hard to draw the line between what is legitimate freedom of expression and what is the abuse of individual liberty which our society is concerned to preserve. But, I do not think it would be excessive to mark that kind of material as propaganda and, where we were satisfied that that kind of material was emanating from a propaganda machine, that we should require the film or the television show to be preceded by a notification to all, "This is issued by the Friends of Soviet Russia" or "by the Association for the Promotion of Soviet-Irish Friendship", so as to forewarn those who were to be exposed to it that this is a dramatic presentation which has a purpose, which is designed to convey a message and to put those who are circumstanced to see it on notice that this is propaganda material.
I think it is probably true to say that no propaganda material should be allowed on television but it is hard to lay down a definite rule. I am thinking of this picture that was recently displayed in Dublin, which purported to be a précis of events in the last war and which was certainly a communist propaganda film which they very skilfully deceived some people in this country into displaying—I think in the belief that it was an ordinary war film. I imagine that the broadcasting authority here if it knew the origin of such material would turn it down on its merits but I agree with the Minister that he should not be called upon to function as a censor. I think we are right in confining our censorship restrictions to the grounds on which they are at present founded—indecency, blasphemy, or matters of that kind, with which our censor is entitled to deal.
I am not asking that the Minister should exercise the right of censorship but if, in his judgment, material is being televised which is of a propaganda nature, he should have the same power to require that a note would be attached stating that this is propaganda material. The House will remember that when the Bill was before the House I pressed strongly, and the Minister accepted, an amendment that the Television Authority itself would have the right in respect of any statement that he required them to issue to declare that they were issuing this statement, not of their own volition, but under the Minister's order. I think the Minister might very well consider requiring a corresponding right of directing the Television Authority to say in certain circumstances that this material about to be broadcast could be constructed as propaganda.
I admit that this is a very difficult and serious decision to take but we have got to open our eyes to the fact that we have to live in a world in which new problems are perennially arising. One of these problems is the immense growth of the power of propaganda as an instrument of the incessant war which is being waged in the world today against the system of government in which we believe and the system of freedom for which we have so long contended. Against that incessant war we should arm ourselves with appropriate weapons, not discarding the fundamental rights which are an integral part of the system we are concerned to defend but not being so solicitous about those fundamental rights as to be afraid to adopt essential measures for their effective protection against the everchanging techniques of dialectical materialism and Marxist Communism in their perennial efforts to destroy freedom and to establish a worldwide dictatorship of Russian Communism.
I hope this television project will turn out for the best. I hope it will not involve us all in an unbearable burden of cost because I do not think it ought to come high in the order of priorities for which public money, in our circumstances, can be appropriated with propriety. I deplore the conflict of interest which is enshrined and I hope that sooner, rather than later, that conflict of interest will be eliminated from this public service. Subject to those reservations, I wish the Minister well in his project.
